Boku Dake ga Inai Machi (ERASED) Anime Review

This post is by guest writer Zachary Kozinski.

Gripping Dread, Heartwarming Whimsy

What would you do if you had a second chance whenever there was a tragedy? What if you have the power to change the present by going back to the past? These ideas and questions are explored in one of the newest anime from A-1 Pictures, Boku Dake ga Inai Machi, or more commonly referred to as ERASED.

ERASED sports one of the most immersive and suspenseful mysteries of recent memory, having moments that quite literally had me dreading the next few seconds. Only a handful of anime have ever had me this way, and those are among my top 10 favorite anime of all time. ERASED had interesting and believable characters, a haunting story, and some of the most impressive moments in anime that I’ve seen in a while (this includes aesthetically, musically, and narratively).

Episodes 1-4 Review

ERASED is based on a manga by Kei Sanbei, which made its run from June 4, 2012 to March 4, 2016. The story is a mystery thriller with some fantasy elements, and while some of these fantasy elements are a little flimsy, the mystery and the thriller pieces did their jobs spectacularly.

The premise of ERASED is that the main character, Satoru Fujinuma, a manga artist and part time pizza delivery boy, has a gift he calls “Revival.” Revival allows Satoru to go back in time to right before an event that would result in the death of another person, which he uses to save other people’s lives. However, as the first episode goes on, we learn about an event that forever changed Satoru’s own life. In his hometown, a string of serial kidnappings and murders of young school children rocked his community, the first of which Satoru feels he could have prevented.

These events from his childhood come back to haunt him, resulting in Satoru’s mother being murdered and leaving Satoru as the number one suspect. While running away from the police, Satoru experiences a massive Revival, resulting in him reliving his childhood to prevent the murders from ever happening.

Immediately, I noticed that while Satoru is in the past as a 5th grader, the anime goes into widescreen format, with black bars appearing on the top and lower parts of the screen. It’s cinematic, like a movie screen, which is further illustrated with the show’s opening and the symbolism of movie reels.

As a side note, I like how we have the voice of Future Satoru narrating his inner thoughts, as it reminds us that he is a grown adult inside a child’s body. It also paints Future Satoru as “a reactor,” like he’s just a consciousness that is reminiscing on old times or, perhaps a better analogy, a movie-goer watching a mystery. This creates an interesting effect you really don’t get in many other anime.

In the past, which takes place in 1988, Satoru attempts to save the first victim, Kayo Hinazaki, who suffers from constant abuse from her mother. First, he has to actually befriend the girl, which proves to be a bit of a challenge due to her cold outer shell.

Satoru and Kayo’s interactions with each other are actually very satisfying to watch, as we get to see their friendship blossom. Kayo starts off as this emotionless doll, due to domestic abuse at the hands of her mother, which both made my stomach turn and my heart break when they revealed what was actually going on.

During this opening up of Kayo’s heart, we get plenty of moments that capture the wondrous spark of youth. An example would be the birthday party scene, which seems like something only a little kid could get excited about, but when said party actually happened, I felt like I was a little kid again walking into my own surprise party. Everything was so colorful, so happy…even in such an emotional anime, I’m glad we could have moments like these.

I loved how the music was able to keep these moments feeling both surreal and special, able to convey the feeling the scene was trying to present. I never felt my attention being pulled away by the background music, but rather that the scene as a whole was being enhanced by an amazing soundtrack.

Speaking of music, the opening and ending are some of the best I’ve ever seen, more so for the ending. At first, I wasn’t too impressed with the opening, as I tend to drone out a lot of rock songs from anime since they’re usually mediocre at best, but after a few episodes, I found myself humming it. With the opening, I’ve really never encountered an anime that could present the feelings the show was trying to get across, showing childlike innocence, desperation, and even a hopeful tone near the end. And I could talk all day about the visuals.

It’s one of those moments where you have your hands over your mouth in shock.

Anyway, Kayo opening up leads to happy moments, heartwarming moments, and even whimsical moments that I couldn’t stop smiling at. It also leads to one of the most horrifying moments of the entire series, when Satoru thinks that he actually saved Kayo, only for her to die anyway. The way they show how Satoru learns of her death is just…satisfyingly sickening. Odd word choice, I know, but it’s one of those moments where you have your hands over your mouth in shock.

Another highlight I want to bring up about ERASED is the character reactions, which it’s able to portray spectacularly. In most media, not just anime, there’s always that one moment of realization followed by a reaction. In ERASED, we slowly see the reacting character realize what’s going on, and see the terror dawn in their eyes. These character reactions help us as viewers to really understand the dire situations they’re in, slowly crescendoing into realization instead of shoving them into sudden revelation. In my opinion, they decided to go for a more subtle approach, which paid off big time when helping us to sympathize with the main character.

Episodes 5-6 Review

Satoru fails his quest to save everyone in the past, and fails the entire Revival. He’s sent back to his current timeline, where he finds himself in an alleyway after escaping the police. Knowing he had failed, he goes into hiding, trying to figure out what to do next.

This is, after the drama of the first four episodes, a huge slowdown. These two episodes show Satoru processing the events of the first Revival, and attempting to cope with the aftermath back in the present. I’m glad the animators and director decided to do this, as it gives us a chance to breath after all the tension woven into the previous episodes. In essence, for us viewers, it’s our time to reflect on the failed Revival too.

Over the course of episodes five and six, we get to see Satoru evading the police who are still searching for him. It gets to the point that when Satoru took up shelter in his manager’s house, his manager called the police to his residence. Satoru barely escaped, but was stopped by one of his coworkers, Airi. She takes him to her house, knowing that he wasn’t the one to murder his mother.

It’s refreshing that Satoru doesn’t get help just because “he’s a good guy.”

After we meet up with Airi, we get one of my favorite scenes in the anime, where we get to learn the motivation as to why Airi believed in Satoru. This isn’t because she’s just some kind soul, as most media like to do in situations like this, but instead because of a situation in her past. It’s refreshing to have context as to why someone is helping the main character, as opposed to them just thinking “I know he’s a good guy!”

Getting a brief burst of excitement and adrenaline, the murderer attempts to kill Airi by setting her house on fire while she’s still inside, and pinning the blame on Satoru. It’s exciting, for sure, but there has to be a better way then just burning her alive. If the murderer wanted to guarantee that they were going to actually kill Airi and frame Satoru, why didn’t they just kill her like they did with Satoru’s mom? I mean, Airi is a high schooler and Satoru is 29 years old, so it wouldn’t be that far-fetched thinking that Satoru simply overpowered her and murdered her. Just a bit of a continuity error I picked up on.

We also get to meet a person who was working with Satoru’s mother, a man named Sawada, who had been researching the missing children for a while. From this man, we were able to get a list of suspects for who the murderer was and the confirmation that Satoru had, in fact, changed the future in some way while he was in the past.

I enjoyed how the anime revealed this tidbit of information, as how he changed the future wasn’t drastic. He discovers that he was able to delay Kayo’s death by two days, which I found to be a subtle difference that shows that Satoru did have the possibility of changing the present, and how hard it was to actually change it. This not only shows Satoru that he has to become more drastic with his time meddling to truly change things, but it’s also a beautiful detail to satisfy time travel nutcases such as myself.

Eventually Satoru is captured by the police, but he begs his power of Revival to give him another chance to fix the past. He’s given this chance, and off he goes on his final Revival into the past.

Episodes 7-10 Review

From now on, I’d rather not talk about key plot points, as the last few episodes contain massive spoilers for ERASED. We’re at the point in the anime where loose ends are being tied up, character arcs are ending, and major elements to the story are being revealed.

After going back to the past for his final chance at redemption, we can immediately see a change in Satoru’s behavior compared to his prior Revival. He becomes much more radical, tossing subtlety out the window. Satoru attempts to and succeeds in doing some extremely shocking things, acts which could ruin his future or have him placed in jail for the rest of his life. This is executed beautifully, because just by watching his actions, we can see how desperate Satoru is to save Kayo and the other children.

While saving Kayo and the other two kids from the murderer, we also get time to explore and use some of the important side characters, which is always nice to do. This includes Kenya, Satoru’s wise and mature best friend, who ends up assisting Satoru in saving the children; Hiromi, another of Satoru’s friends who was also a victim of the murderer, getting a glimpse at his personal life with his workaholic parents; and even a character named Kazu who I had assumed was just a background character, being just another one of Satoru’s friends…Satoru really has a lot of character development in his group of friends.

I remember holding my breath in actual terror.

After hiding out in an abandoned bus, Kayo is left alone overnight while Satoru goes home, so as to not raise suspicion from his mother. Then comes the most intense and terrifying scene in the entire anime — I remember holding my breath in actual terror as I watched the events unfold. Even though it only lasted twenty or thirty seconds, it felt like an eternity.

At this point, I would also like to mention how good of a mother Satoru has, as she really steps up during this section of the anime as a star parent. Not only is she able to figure out what Satoru is doing, but she actually assists him in helping Kayo. Satoru’s mom is, in my opinion, one of the best parent characters in anime, which is a relief when dealing with Kayo’s abusive mother.

Soon after saving the other two children, the murderer is revealed to Satoru in probably one of the most brilliantly done reveals in a mystery that I’ve seen in awhile. This is great since, to me, a mystery show can only be as good as the reveal of its main villain. Instead of flat out stating that this person is the murderer, it presented a scene that slowly increased in tension, until one single sentence made everything click. The look on Satoru’s face was completely priceless and horrifying, especially when you realize that the murderer now has their sights set on Satoru…

Episodes 11-12 Review

While the last two episodes of ERASED weren’t…bad, they were just incredibly disappointing coming off of what I considered to be the best episode in the entire series.

Having narrowly survived an attempt on his life, Satoru fell into a coma for 15 years, waking up three years before his initial Revival. That’s fine and all, as I had expected Satoru to wrap everything up in the current era anyway, but the real problem comes from his medical condition. First of all, he can barely move because of being in a coma for so long, and is wheelchair-bound for the rest of the series. Secondly, and this is what really makes these episodes such a let down, is that Satoru is suffering from temporary amnesia. This completely destroyed a lot of built up suspense over the course of the previous episodes, since we can see that Satoru is in no imminent danger or desperate to even stop the murderer.

The killer’s capture felt like a more grown up episode of Scooby-Doo.

Satoru does eventually regain his memories, of course, and does confront the murderer in a scene that’s…extremely far-fetched. It’s a satisfying and climatic end to the story, no doubt, but the way the murderer was eventually caught felt like a more grown up episode of Scooby-Doo.

However, despite these shortcomings, ERASED is able to tie up every loose end in a way that felt satisfying. It’s one of those endings that ends like how the anime started, which was always my favorite type of ending. It’s fitting, and just subtle enough to hype up fans who stuck through the journey. Of course, there was an after credits sequence which shows what ends up happening between Satoru and Airi, which adds to the closure the ending gives as a whole.

Despite stumbling a bit near the end, ERASED was a near perfect anime. ERASED is able to control the feelings of its viewers like a puppet master, having moments that were extremely emotional woven together with tense and suspenseful bits that made me dread to even press the play button. Every character that contributed something to the story was developed in some way, which was satisfying for people such as me who enjoy character growth. The music and animation, especially in the past, are some of the best I’ve seen in some time. As a whole, ERASED felt complete, and it’s an experience I truly wish I could relive…perhaps a Revival would be in order?